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Study Results from University of Valencia Provide New Insights into Risk Management (Increasing the default interletter spacing of words can help…

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Study Results from University of Valencia Provide New Insights into Risk Management (Increasing the default interletter spacing of words can help drivers to read traffic signs at longer distances)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Investigators publish new report on Risk Management. According to news reporting originating from Valencia, Spain, by VerticalNews correspondents, research stated, "Would an increase in the default interletter spacing improve the legibility of words in traffic signs? Previous evidence on traffic sign design and recent studies on the cognitive processes involved in visual word recognition have provided conflicting results. The present work examined whether an increase in the default interletter spacing would improve the search of a word in direction traffic signs."

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from the University of Valencia, "To achieve this objective, twenty-two drivers participated in a driving simulation experiment. They followed a highway route and indicated whether a target place name was present among a set of distractors shown on direction traffic signs along the route. We compared the default interletter spacing of the Spanish 'CC Rige' font (which is based on the internationally-used Transport font) and a 2.5-times expanded interletter spacing. The results revealed that the drivers were able to give a correct response at a distance to the traffic sign that was on average longer in the expanded than in the default spacing condition. This advantage in the legibility distance was observed in the absence of significant differences in reading accuracy, gaze behavior, or driving performance measures. Therefore, the evidence provided supports that drivers can benefit from a slight increase in interletter spacing relative to the standard spacing."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "Some of the design factors influencing this effect are discussed."

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting P. Tejero, University of Valencia, Fac Psicol, Dept. of Psicol Basica ERI Lectura, Valencia 46010, Spain. Additional authors for this research include B. Insa and J. Roca.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2018.04.028. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.